The New Ground War:

I know about the Goliaths and the Japanese incendiary balloon attacks. Rail Gun/Coil Gun. The germans had designs for aa rail guns. The fire control systems greatly improved aa guns effectiveness.

The Russians had tele operated tanks. Full sized tanks mind you. I love world war II for all its bizzare weaponry. Check out greyfalcon.us Once you wade through the wackiness the site has some damn interesting things on it. Like a ball tank.

Well, that gits iffy... Truth is there is no consensus on what makes an intermediate round. Technically the .223 Rem (the round that coined the term intermediate) is a Rifle round because it's meant to be fired from a rifle but i think that's not specific enough. Some say it's case length that's the deciding factor, being between 35-45mm in length. But by that measurement the .44 and .357 magnum should be classed as intermediate and not "pistol rounds." I vote for a new class, if it's between 25-35mm case length it's a Carbine Round.

edited 27th Sep '10 12:02:38 PM by Lockhart

Need to know about strange weapons, especially weird guns? I know em, and if i don't I'll find them.

Any round of rifle caliber but not using a full sized rifle cartridge and is still more powerful then a sub-machine gun round. IE pistol ammo.

Examples are the Stg-44 and the Ak-47, Nato 5.56mm, and Russia 5.56mm. The Nato 7.62mm is a full sized rifle cartridge.

The case length assessment is accurate. The magnum rounds can indeed be considered intermediate rounds and can be fired from a rifle.

There are match grade pistols which fire full sized rifle cartridges. Hell there are pistols that fire a .50cal BMG round. The .44magnum round first saw life as rifle bullet.

Carbines can fire either a full sized round, intermediate, or a pistol round.

Another thing to remember about various civilian fire arms is that they can come in any variety of layouts as compared to their military counterparts which rely on parts similarity for maintenance and ease of production.

For example I could have a rifle that is originally chambered for a traditional .303 I could take it in have parts swapped out and come out with a rifle firing .44 game cartridges.

But my question still stands what would you guys think of the various .40caliber rounds as possible bolt action rifle round.

The definition that I seem to find mostly consistant (if a bit vauge) is that it's in-between a pistol round and a full-sized rifle round.

The logic behind this was that despite fielding rifles firing full-sized cartridges out to distancs otu to a thousand meters or so, most battlefield engagements were taking place at ranges far smaller than that, 50-300 meters. More urban combat, rather than across the no-mans-land in WWI. You can blame myopic military minds for this; why get rid of al those sturdy rifles and mountains of stockpiled ammunition left over from yesteryear, if it all still works?

(The answer is that the battlefield conditions and tactics made them obsolete, no matter how handsome and sturdy they were.)

Cue lots of submachineguns being manufactured and fielded. However, an SMG is typically worthless beyond 200 meters (same with the M1 carbine, which is firing a long pistol round). Amazing for close-ranged affairs, not so much for open field condition, which are still something to worry about. Plus, lack of kinetic energy, as well. Pistol cartridges just don't pack the oomph that a rifle cartridge will, at long ranges, even if you do manage to hit them with your pistol cartridge.

So, the solution was to give the soldier something that could reach out and touch someone at rifle-like engagement range, while still being capable of controllable high volumes of fire like an SMG - full-sized rifle cartridges (like a 30-06) out of a small firearm is very hard on the parts and difficult to control in full automatic mode. The German-designed Sturmgewehrs (assault rifles) did this job well, but were introduced in insufficient numbers and too late in the war to make much difference in the final outcome of the war - they were still spending resources making 98K's, a rifle that had essentially served the Gernam Army for half a decade at the time, in one form or another.

Even as early as WWI was some work done in this area - change the bolt out on your bolt action, and insert a simple SMG action into its place, and you've converted your .30-caliber bolt action rifle into a .30-caliber long-barreled blowback-operated submachinegun. Pederson Device, I think it's called. Amazing concept, didn't work too well in the field - it approached the problem differently than designing an intermediate rifle and cartridge.

Hell in the 20th century the only things made larger than 8mm (or .338 your pick) and not intended for the infantry/sniper role are anti-materiel/anti-tank rounds like .50 BMG, 12.7 Soviet (like on the NSV or DSHK) or 14.5 Soviet (such as the PTRS-41 and KPV).

In modern war, rounds like .408 Cheytac are anti-materiel rounds first.

Edit: wrong caliber designation.

edited 27th Sep '10 12:37:01 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Well, to answer the question, yes. I can see some manufacturer manages to shoehorn their way into getting a limited number of their rifles fielded - maybe they know someone on the Ordnance Board or something (cue subplot about war profiteering or not), and you end up with a field trial of some nifty .40-caliber rifle.

Wether or not said rifle works or not is up to you, though, as the author. You might have some guys love the thing, and able to use it to great effect; and others who have to use it discarding it first chance the get for Good Ole' Reliable.

That's still a rather generic definition, but the firearm industry never has been very definitive. Dodging powder loads, case dimensions, and various other things, ballistic Coefficients are your only real problem with .40 caliber rounds. The wider a bullet is, the longer it must be to be able to be aerodynamic. For example look at the .223 Rem, the 6.5mm Grendel, and the 7.62x39mm. .223 Rem has the highest velocity but the least power and only the second highest effective range. The 7.62x39 has the lowest velocity but the most power and the shortest distance. The 6.5mm Grendel has more power than a .233 Rem, a longer reach, and leaves the barrel faster than a 7.62x39mm. That's why .30cal rounds are so common for full rifles (they have good ballistic coefficients for their size). In terms of damage, .40 rounds would be overwhelming, even today a .40cal rife round would pry smash a ballistic plate if not penetrate it. You also have heavy recoil because circular bullets increase in mass exponentially as they get wider. Done right you could make a viable rifle round in that caliber though.

edited 27th Sep '10 12:43:36 PM by Lockhart

Need to know about strange weapons, especially weird guns? I know em, and if i don't I'll find them.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy